Not only does the Hebrew word for “law” have the same meanings in English, major scientific theories are often referred to as “Torahs”, as in the Torah of Relativity and the Quantum Torah (“Torah”, after all, means a doctrine or collection of laws).
The scientists of the scientific revolution, and Newton in particular, who is probably more responsible than anyone else for the spread of the notion of “scientific law”, were not deists, they were full-on theists, and they did indeed think they were uncovering the laws that God had laid down for the universe. You can find this sort of thinking expressed very explicitly in Galileo’s writings too. According to Galileo, God had provided mankind with two “books” for us to read and come to understand him: the Bible and “the book of nature” which, he said, is “written in the language of mathematics.” Some historians of science have argued that modern science could not have developed except in the context of a culture dominated religion like Christianity, which has a concept of God as a cosmic law giver. (I suppose Judaism or Islam wight have got there too, but the idea is that it is not coincidental that science did not develop in cultures dominated by Hinduism, Confucianism, or Buddhism, despite the fact that up until about he 18th century, both India and China had more advanced civilizations than did Europe.)
Deism did not really exist at the time of the scientific revolution. It is a later (18th century) development that arises in response to the scientific revolution, and the successes of Newtonian science in particular. Everyone involved in the scientific revolution that led to heliocentrism and Newtonian physics (on all sides of the very complex debates of the time) was a committed theist. They were not all good conventional Christians (although Galileo, in particular, was just that), but when they departed from Christian orthodoxy,it was generally through embracing aspects of spiritual belief systems, such as Hermeticism, that most modern secularists would probably feel to be considerably more irrational and superstitious than conventional Christianity. It is thoroughly misleading and unhistorical to imply, as the OP does, that the thinkers who developed the notion of scientific law had hankerings after atheism. The first hints of that sort of thinking (deistic or genuinely atheistic) do not appear until well into the 18th century, after and because Newtonian physics has come to dominate how people (Christians) understand the natural world.
Yes, see Principia Mathematica Philosophie Naturalis by Isaac Newton. Your position is based upon nothing but historical ignorance and prejudice. No doubt relatively few scientists now think of scientific laws in religious terms -and I am not recommending that they should - but the people who originally conceived of the notion of scientific law, and made it stick (and who invented the scientific method), most certainly did, and often wrote quite explicitly about the religious (pro-religious, as they saw it) significance of their work.
Or how about Einstein: “God does not play dice.” Sure, this was doubtless not intended entirely literally, but I do not think it was intended as an entirely dead metaphor either.
The notion that scientific research affords insight into the mind of God, and that scientific findings provide positive support for Christianity continued to be intellectually dominant, and commonly explicitly expressed, amongst actual scientists (and other educated people) well into the 19th century. Deists, agnostics and even atheists were around by this time (unlike in the 17th century), but they were a distinct minority, even amongst scientists. Charles Darwin himself subscribed to this Christianized view of science (and was motivated by it) in the earlier part of his career, although, of course, his eventual discoveries and theories greatly contributed to its decline. (Not that it has entirely died out amongst all scientists, even today. Theism != creationism.)
No, but it connotes algebra. The equation is just a description of the actual phenomenon, which existed for a long time before algebra got invented.
First, welcome aboard, bourbon-soda, I’m glad you posted here. I’ve taken the liberty of amending the thread title slightly, in hopes of attracting some posters who are fluent in other languages, for their input.
Your explanation is more strongly supported by empirical evidence (facts).
Mine is more elegant.
Seriously, you may be right about the last part. One day what we now call a scientific Law, may have morphed into Truthitude, or something.
Thanks. Good idea. I am surprised there is not a venerable treatise on the subject out there somewhere other than as a proof of existence of God. I really thought I was just missing same with searches.
That would be the point, it would just be a description, less connotation. Did algebra exist before it was invented?
Natural laws (Naturgesetze) are also often called Gesetze (laws) in German:
Newtonsche Gesetze (Newton’s laws of motion)
Keplersche Gesetze (Kepler’s laws of planetary motion)
In Finnish they’re all laws ( Archimedes, gravity etc ), it’s just a nice and short word ‘laki’. It’s borrowed from Swedish ( lag ) and they probably just borrowed using it from English or French. In Swedish at least some are ‘princip’ ( like Archimedes ).
In Finnish there’s no religious undertones that I’m aware of, even the word nature isn’t a problem although it suggests it’s been created. ‘Laki’ just means a code that shouldn’t be violated. No law-giver or enforcer is suggested.
‘Laki’ means also the top of something ( hill, head etc ), so that might obscure it a little. And science here really didn’t kick in until the end of the 1800’s, so discussion was probably quite secular.
And anyone using ‘principle’ ( prinsiippi ) will be mocked for being snobbish, no exceptions.
Laws are supposed to exhibit universality and necessity: for any event A, there is another event B that must follow. The problem, as Hume pointed out several centuries ago, is that we do not observe any universality or necessity: we do not observe all crows when we conclude inductively that all crows are black, and we do not observe any necessary connection between events. All we observe are the two events and our habitual expectation that the future will resemble the past. In other words, we flatter ourselves when we think we possess actual laws of nature. All we really have is an ability to find and employ useful patterns.
Then who or what enforces the “shouldn’t?”
Does “useful” connote anthropocentrism?
The question isn’t “What does the word ‘law’ mean?” The question is why natural laws are called laws. The answer is that they always have been since well before English existed. The only factual answer here is that the original word describing both legislation and gravity meant “something laid down or set.”
This is the only factual answer there is. Any theology you want to add to the mix merely serves to falsify the answer.
“They always have been” smacks of “is now and ever shall be.”
If the question isn’t “what does the word ‘law’ mean,” why put forth “the only factual answer is the original word meant …?'”
Who is “you?”
In case of nature’s laws, they can’t be violated because they can’t be violated, ipso facto… if You will try, You will fail.
To uneducated people they are not solid laws with sections and paragraphs ( which might suggest a law-giver ), but more obscure, something like You can’t jump over Eiffel Tower. But if You can jump two meters, why couldn’t You jump 2,01. And if you can do 2,01, why not 2,02 and so on… but at the end of the day, there’s no way You’re going over that Eiffel Tower! It’s all within You Yourself, but the boundaries are flexible.
Scientists may think the boundaries are solid, but they’re not sure if those have been found yet, so they are testing those boundaries ( which is what makes them scientists ).
So I don’t think that anyone but a religious zealot assumes nature laws equivalent to earthly legislation.
( I hope somebody understands what I’m trying to say and maybe translates it… )
Well, not just that. He was kind of an equal opportunity nutbag - he also dabbled in alchemy and, according to some sources, sorcery (or at least would pal around with the kind of politico-occultist crowds, cabals and secret societies the 17th century was teeming with).
Anyway, back to the OP, and Frenchie chiming in here: we do also call things like gravity “laws”, along with formulas named after the geeks who came up with them (e.g. la loi de Boyle, la loi d’Ohm etc…).
However we don’t talk about Archimedes’ law, but of his principle or sometimes just his “poussée”. Archimedes’ Push I guess would be the literal translation ? (I always got a kick out of that one when I was a kid. I couldn’t help picturing boats being held on the surface by a slavering, Sisyphean figure, always propping them up and straining under the weight) ; while Pythagoras has a theorem rather than a law. I guess dead Greeks don’t rate the Big, legal Leagues ? 
From a quick mental reckoning, I’d say the use of the word “law” for such axioms and theories and so forth seems to originate around the time of the Enlightenment back when scientists styled themselves “natural philosophers” and carried on from there but only for a limited time. We don’t say that E=mc² is Einstein’s Law for example - just a formula. Planck’s got himself a constant, Carnot/thermodynamics get a principle, Schrödinger for his part has his equation.
So the answer to the OP would seem to me to be: the “natural laws” are called that because the jokers who came up with and popularized them were theists and wholly happy about the connotation and subtext. Then the zeitgeist changed and along did the language in use.
Richard Feynman wrote a book called “The Character of Physical Law”, based on a series of lectures he gave. It’s pretty interesting.
Thanks, that sounds like what I was fishing for. I have his 3 volume lecture series, maybe I passed over it there or the separate book sounds like a find.
Tangentially, the frequency with which people over into prescriptive or judgmental language even on this topic is interesting.
Yes, of course. The problem is according human qualities to the universe outside us.
Hume is really where you want to start. Feynman makes far more sense having first read Hume. I’d read Kuhn first too.